The present invention relates to a method of extracting virus genes as well as an apparatus for such extraction. Particularly, this invention relates to a method and an apparatus for extracting virus genes by means of electrophoresis, using a conductive hollow fiber membrane.
Among virus infectious diseases, those caused by hepatitis viruses or human immuno-deficiency viruses (HIV) may lead to fatal diseases such as liver cirrhosis, liver cancer, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Present diagnoses for these infectious diseases include an antibody assay, virus culture, and gene diagnosis. However, the antibody assay has problems in that it takes a very long period of time to confirm an antibody, and that before the antibody is confirmed, the patient may be given a false negative diagnosis.
The virus culture has some drawbacks, including: culturing methods are not established regarding some types of viruses; but even the viruses which can be cultured, have cultured cells which are different from each other; and it requires a considerable amount of time to culture these cells. On the other hand, the gene diagnosis requires many manual operations which are complicated. However, since the diagnosis can be conducted quickly, the gene diagnosis has been employed in many cases.
In the gene diagnosis, it is necessary to extract virus genes from a specimen, for which a chemical treatment is employed. However, the extraction procedures are complicated and require many manual op rations, which in fact have not been automated. When the number of viruses in a specimen is small, it is necessary to apply a pretreatment of virus enrichment by means of an ultracentrifuge for a long period of time, which is burdensome.